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Author: cha bingcha bing Date: Mar 12, 2008 04:40
Found an interesting article on tasting that I thought the group might
find interesting. The article is on wine, but of course there are
parallels:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/11/AR2008031100730.html...
I personally am often confounded by trying to describe the taste of a
particular tea, or trying to guess what a tea tastes like based on
someone else's description. The idea that people taste things
differently seems like common sense, but of course people want to
compare their experience to others. This seems like a promising way to
do so.
cha bing
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Author: Lewis PerinLewis Perin Date: Mar 12, 2008 07:48
cha bing yahoo.com> writes:
Yes, it's very interesting. Assuming there's scientific truth behind
the article, I would think that having a palate tolerant of bitterness
is pretty much required to get much pleasure out of tea. And, as the
article says near the end, experience can eventually help you develop
an ability to enjoy subtleties of taste that might initially be
inaccessible to you.
/Lew
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Author: Lewis PerinLewis Perin Date: Mar 12, 2008 11:04
cha bing yahoo.com> writes:
Having thought about this article intermittently for a few hours, one
thing that stands out is "salt suppresses bitterness".
This might explain why, when Tibetans boil, e.g., low-grade raw Pu'er
for hours, they add not only milk but salt.
It might also explain something that's puzzled me for years. As far
as I know, if you go far enough back in Chinese tea history, you find
people decocting (not steeping) *salted* green tea. I would love to
know what someone who's read the tea classics thinks about this.
Danny? MarshalN?
/Lew
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Author: An SonjaeAn Sonjae Date: Mar 13, 2008 00:38
The chapter on Brewing the Tea in Lu Yu's Classic of Tea says 'When
the boiling water is in its first stage, you may add a measure of salt
in accordance with the amount of water. You can tell when to stop by
sampling it.' The true Science of Tea, everything precisely measured
and specified! He never seems to say how much tea should be used per
person, either! Given the amount of space devoted to describing the
different kinds of froth and scum that appear as the water boils, I
think he was not using the purest bottled mineral water. Black scum
seems to be especially bad, he says it spoils the taste.
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Author: Lewis PerinLewis Perin Date: Mar 13, 2008 07:46
Lewis Perin panix.com> writes:
> cha bing yahoo.com> writes:
> >> Found an interesting article on tasting that I thought the group might
>> find interesting. The article is on wine, but of course there are
>> parallels...
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Author: DogMaDogMa Date: Mar 13, 2008 16:50
An Sonjae wrote:
> The chapter on Brewing the Tea in Lu Yu's Classic of Tea says 'When
> the boiling water is in its first stage, you may add a measure of salt
> in accordance with the amount of water. You can tell when to stop by
> sampling it.' ... describing the
> different kinds of froth and scum that appear as the water boils, I
> think he was not using the purest bottled mineral water. Black scum
> seems to be especially bad, he says it spoils the taste.
Here's a datum that might be relevant: many organic materials are much
more soluble in ion-free water. Adding a tiny amount of ionizable
inorganics can cause "salting out" of the organics, an effect very often
used in purifying the results of an organic synthesis, as well as in
keeping pasta from sticking together in the pot.
Salt added to water containing a lot of marginally dissolved organics,
e.g. from plant decay, might knock a lot of them out into a separate
phase (solid or goopy) that would settle, froth off or stick to the
vessel walls. Salt might also enhance the complexation of tannins with
caffeine and the like, effectively removing bitter and astringent
components from solution.
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Author: cha bingcha bing Date: Mar 14, 2008 18:36
Curiosity got the best of me and I added a pinch of salt to my green
tea this morning. It didn't exactly improve the taste for me. It
seemed to take some of the sweetness out of the tea and may have
dampened the bitterness a little, but it also caused it to linger on
my tongue in an unfavorable way. It took away the refreshing quality
of the tea and make it heavier and more substantial tasting--like a
broth perhaps.
Interestingly, I went to the Freer Gallery in DC today and they have
an exhibit (one small room, actually) on japanese tea ceramics that
were for the common people (i.e., not tea ceremony wares). One of the
descriptions of a pot stated that it was the type in which coarse
everyday tea would be made, perhaps mixed with pickles, rice or beans.
I found that interesting, and thought of the breakfasts that I've
eaten in China, which have been much more likely to include small
pickled things than the panoply of sweets one would find in a typical
american breakfast. Maybe that isn't relevant to this discussion, but
it did make me consider that salted tea, like everything else, is
surely a taste acquire
--be it through culture or some other means.
cha bing
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Author: MarshalNMarshalN Date: Mar 20, 2008 12:23
On Mar 14, 9:36 pm, cha bing yahoo.com> wrote:> Curiosity got the best of me and I added a pinch of salt to my green
> tea this morning. It didn't exactly improve the taste for me. It
> seemed to take some of the sweetness out of the tea and may have
> dampened the bitterness a little, but it also caused it to linger on
> my tongue in an unfavorable way. It took away the refreshing quality
> of the tea and make it heavier and more substantial tasting--like a
> broth perhaps.
>
> Interestingly, I went to the Freer Gallery in DC today and they have
> an exhibit (one small room, actually) on japanese tea ceramics that
> were for the common people (i.e., not tea ceremony wares). One of the
> descriptions of a pot stated that it was the type in which coarse
> everyday tea would be made, perhaps mixed with pickles, rice or beans.
> I found that interesting, and thought of the breakfasts that I've
> eaten in China, which have been much more likely to include small
> pickled things than the panoply of sweets one would find in a typical
> american breakfast. Maybe that isn't relevant to this discussion, but
> it did make me consider that salted tea, like everything else, is
> surely a taste acquired--be it through culture or some other means. ...
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